Senior Privacy Engineer

About Upstart

At Upstart, we’re united by a mission that matters: to radically reduce the cost and complexity of borrowing for all Americans. Every day, we bring creativity, experimentation, and advanced AI to reshape access to credit, helping millions move forward financially with clarity and confidence.

As the leading AI lending marketplace, we partner with banks and credit unions to expand access to affordable credit through technology that’s both radically intelligent and deeply human. Our platform runs over one million predictions per borrower using more than 3,000 signals, powering smarter, fairer decisions for millions of customers. But the numbers only hint at the impact. Every idea, every voice, and every contribution moves us closer to a world where credit never stands between people and their financial progress.

We’re proudly digital-first, giving most Upstarters the flexibility to do their best work from wherever they thrive, alongside teammates across 80+ cities in the US and Canada. Digital-first doesn’t mean distant. We’re intentional about in-person connection through team onsites, planning sessions, and moments that spark creativity and trust. And whether you choose to work primarily from home or collaborate in-person from one of our offices in Columbus, Austin, the Bay Area, or New York City, you’ll have the support to work in the way that works best for you.

If you’re energized by tackling meaningful problems, excited to innovate with purpose, and motivated by work that truly matters, we’d love to hear from you.

The Team:

Upstart’s Privacy Engineering team builds the systems, tools, and technical controls that help protect borrower, applicant, partner, and Upstarter data across our products and platforms. The team works across Engineering, Security, Legal, Compliance, Product, Data, and Machine Learning to make privacy-by-design practical and scalable.

As a Privacy Engineer II at Upstart, you will build software and services that embed privacy controls into the core architecture of Upstart’s products and technical systems. You will help implement privacy-enhancing technologies, data minimization patterns, and governance tooling that support responsible data use across Upstart’s AI lending marketplace.

How you’ll make an impact

Design, build, and operate privacy engineering services that support user control, data governance, anonymization, pseudonymization, retention, deletion, and auditability

Implement privacy-by-design patterns and data minimization controls across Upstart’s products, services, data pipelines, and machine learning systems

Build APIs, libraries, services, and developer tools that help engineering teams standardize privacy enforcement across the technology stack

Partner with Security, Legal, Compliance, Product, Data, Machine Learning, and Infrastructure teams to translate privacy requirements into clear technical specifications

Support privacy reviews, data flow assessments, and technical risk assessments for new products, data uses, and platform capabilities

Improve the reliability, observability, and maintainability of privacy systems through testing, monitoring, documentation, and thoughtful technical design

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience, and 3+ years of experience in software engineering

Experience building and operating production software systems using programming languages such as Python, Go, Java, Scala, C++, Rust, or similar languages

Experience building APIs, microservices, libraries, or backend services that support data governance, privacy controls, security controls, or data platform capabilities

Experience with at least two privacy or security domains such as anonymization, pseudonymization, data retention, deletion, data lineage, access control, encryption, audit logging, or data minimization

Experience translating privacy, security, compliance, or data protection requirements into software systems or technical workflows

Preferred Qualifications

Knowledge of privacy-by-design principles, privacy-enhancing technologies, purpose limitation, consent, retention, deletion, and data subject rights

Experience with data governance systems, data catalogs, lineage tooling, personally identifiable information detection, redaction, or automated policy enforcement